Developing an Information Commitment Survey for Assessing Students' Web Information Searching Strategies and Evaluative Standards for Web Materials

The idea of “information commitments” refers to both learners’ online searching strategies and the evaluative standards that students use to assess the accuracy and usefulness of information in web-based learning environments. Based upon the results of a pioneering and qualitative study on information commitments, this study aimed to develop an Information Commitments Survey (ICS) for assessing the information commitments of 1220 college and graduate students. A series of multivariate multiple regression analyses were also conducted to evaluate the ability of students’ evaluative standards as well as their Internet experiences for predicting their online searching strategies. The results showed that the ICS was deemed to be sufficiently reliable for assessing students’ information commitments. Gender differences regarding the participants’ usage of certain searching strategies were found in this study. Moreover, the students’ grade level as well as their Internet experiences played a significant role in their information commitments. The multivariate multiple regression analyses revealed that both the students’ use of sophisticated evaluative standards and their Internet experiences significantly predicted the use of sophisticated searching strategies, while their use of less advanced evaluative standards significantly predicted the use of less advanced searching strategies.